Music: Thanks & Farewell

Onstage, red-haired Bulgarian Soprano Ljuba (Salome) Welitch was singing her first Tosca at the Metropolitan, and it was as exciting and free-swinging a performance of Tosca as a Met audience had ever seen. Backstage, there was more excitement still. Whispered one anxious artist in a thick Italian accent: "Do you know the words to this For He's a Jolly Good Fellow?" Replied another: "I don't even know the melody." Nevertheless, when the curtain went down on Tosca, then up again on a gala pageant of recent Met history, every singer present seemed...